There was a time when Dylan Andrewsky questioned his mom and dad’s sanity.
“I started off in sports playing baseball in kindergarten. I played it for two years and I didn’t think it was for me,” the Steinert senior recalled. “My parents wanted me to try a different sport. They said, ‘Pick up a lacrosse stick.’ I said, ‘Are you crazy?’”
It seemed like they were when he first started.
“I couldn’t even do it,” Andrewsky said. “I never saw myself playing lacrosse. I never really heard of it.”
As time went on, however, Mike and Rebecca Andrewsky were proven quite sane.
With one game left this season (and his career), Andrewsky had a team-high 61 goals, 16 assists and a team-high 76 ground ball pick-ups. He scored a school record 11 goals in one game against Hightstown May 13. His career total stood at 130 goals, 42 assists and 157 ground balls.
Andrewsky had a banner senior year despite Steinert losing its other top scorer from last year in Zach Meseroll, who transferred to Princeton Day School.
“There were games this year where teams just totally tried to lock him out,” coach Bob Ziegler said. “Most of the time he sees the team’s best defender, which makes it tough.”
When it got too tough, Andrewsky would step aside and sacrifice for the team.
“A few games, I got pressed man, it caused me to have to take myself out of the play,” he said. “I would bring myself to the 50-yard line just so the offense can move the ball without me being in the way by being manned off. Some of those games I had to adapt to how I get manned off.”
For the most part, however, he was a force; scoring a hat trick or more in 10 of Steinert’s first 15 games.
He looks back on his days with the Robbinsville Lacrosse Association — when he “couldn’t even do it” — as shaping him into a polished player.
“It takes time, and the coaches when I was younger were like, ‘We’re gonna prepare you for high school,’ and they did that real well,” Andrewsky said. “I had thoughts of going back to baseball, but after my first couple years I started to like the sport a lot.”
The RLA not only helped Andrewsky score, but it stressed getting ground balls, since teams can’t score without possession.
“Our main focus was ground balls,” he said. “That’s carried throughout all my years in high school, just doing the same thing over and over and over.”
Playing sparingly his freshman year, Andrewsky scored four goals on varsity. He followed with a decent sophomore year, collecting 12 goals and five assists and making the most of his minutes.
“We were really kind of loaded at attack at that point, so he didn’t play much as a freshman,” Ziegler said. “His sophomore year was probably the best team we ever had, and whenever I put him in for whatever reason, whether we were up big, down big, he would score. He would be really good in there.
“Toward the end of the year, I was like ‘I gotta play him. He’s playing too well not to put in there.’ He played a lot down the stretch. He played a lot in that state game we almost won (vs. Northern Burlington) and he’s just continued to improve.”
Ziegler, who was football teammates with Andrewsky’s uncle Brian at Steinert, feels that Dylan’s time with the Spartans grid team helped out. As a strong safety/outside linebacker he made 77-½ tackles in his two years as a regular.
“He’s a strong kid, he doesn’t mind mixing it up in there at the attack position and his stick skills have really improved,” Ziegler said. “He’s a football guy too, so he’s just tough, he’s strong and his attitude has always been great.”
The coach feels that toughness is what helps Andrewsky score.
“He doesn’t mind getting hit,” Ziegler continued. “He bounces off smaller defenders, he kind of bulls through them. He’s decisively quick as well. He’s a left hander, but he’ll use both hands and he’s relentless.”
In looking back on his sophomore year, Andrewsky admitted to some frustration about not playing. He talked to several teammates who felt he should be getting regular minutes.
“That fueled me to have that extra motivation of wanting to be out there more,” Andrewsky said. “I talked to coach Zig about it and found myself on the field a lot more toward the end of the season. That conversation fueled me to get out there.”
After seeing what varsity was all about that season, Andrewsky blossomed last year with a team-high 53 goals to go along with 21 assists and 57 ground balls. Suddenly, he felt the pressure to have to produce again as a senior.
“I needed the chance to prove myself last year,” he said. “Coming off that big season, I didn’t know what to expect this year. I was thinking to myself all off-season: ‘Do I still have it? Will I have another successful year?’ I just stuck with it, kept working in the off-season and it definitely played a big role.”
One of Dylan’s main concerns was how he could perform without Meseroll, who had 50 goals and led the team in assists (41) and points (91). Andrewsky no longer had another big scorer to take some attention from him.
But with the continued improved play of Matt Iraca (24 goals, 30 assists) and the emergence of Tanner Sweeney (18 goals, 30 assists), the veteran attackman found room to operate.
“I thought Zach leaving would affect us way more than it did,” Andrewsky said. “He was always my second head man down on attack. With him gone, I didn’t have high expectations. But with Tanner Sweeney taking his spot, it worked out pretty well.
“I can see a lot of similarities from last year with what we do on offense and how we move the ball. We’ve stayed the same but with a new guy. It let me do what I did on offense.”
He did it well in his record-setting effort against Hightstown, which broke Ryan Callahan’s 2022 mark of nine goals in a game.
“He set the school record against a pretty good Hightstown team,” Ziegler said. “They’re a playoff team and they didn’t have an answer for him.”
Most of his goals came after intermission as Steinert trailed 10-4 at halftime. The Spartans lost, 17-15, but Andrewsky’s performance made it close.
“In the first half, we didn’t play good as a team,” he said. “I only had one goal in the first quarter. They were playing a good defense, they knew what they were doing out there and I thought it would be hard pumping in those goals.
“Throughout the second half I just had the momentum going, I was getting good looks from Matt Iraca, Taylor Sweeney and Mason Caruso, and I was just putting them in. I really didn’t expect (a record) but I got the chances.”
It was only fitting that Iraca was in on the history-making day. The two are close friends and also played football together. Next year they will both attend St. Joe’s University in Philadelphia. Andrewsky is looking to play club lacrosse, but Iraca is unsure whether he will continue playing.
“Me and Matt have been playing together since second grade,” Andrewsky said. “That definitely helps. We have a lot of chemistry.”
Andrewsky shines in the classroom. He has a 4.4 weighted GPA and is a member of the National Honor Society. He will major in pharmaceutical health care and business, hoping to go into pharmaceutical sales.
Andrewsky is a member of Steinert’s Italian Club, where “we cook with the Italian teacher,” and he belongs to the Teams on Fire Club, which provides community service to children in need.
“A lot of my buddies do it,” Andrewsky said. “It’s just a good time being out there doing things for other people and being surrounded by my friends.”
When it comes to strong academics, he had little choice.
“Yeah,” he said, “My mom gets on me.”
Which meant he had to do it. For as he learned long ago, his mom isn’t crazy.
With one game left in the season, Dylan Andrewsky had 61 goals for Steinert lacrosse. (Photo by Amanda Ruch.),
